Yeah, that's not a misprint. Grant Balfour has allowed an OPS+ of EIGHT this year. Not 80, not 88....EIGHT. That means, in a simple sense, that opposing batters are doing about 8% damage against him as compared to an average pitcher.

I was also suprised to learn that there have been over 30,015 217 appearances by a pitcher (since 1956) in which the pitcher has intentionally walked the only batter he faced. 4 of those pitchers (including 1 in 2006 and 1 in 2007) received the loss in their game.

Whiz posted this on the suggestions page and it seemed worthy of its own thread (I took the liberty to add links to the searches):

I was doing some searches on longest team batting streaks and found that Florida currently has has at least 8 SO in each of the last 13 games, the longest such streak in the PI database (i.e., since 1956).

They also currently have streaks of 15 games with 7 or more SO (longest is 17 by the 1996 Tigers) and 4 games with 10 or more SO (longest is 6 by the 1972 and 2004 Reds and 1997 Giants). It’s not surprising since the Marlins strike out 8.7 times per game, by far the most in the majors, and they are on pace to beat the Brewers total of 1399 in a season.

The streak for 6 or more SO is safe for now — the longest is by the Rays last year, an amazing 47 games (2nd longest is only 28, “achieved” by Florida earlier this year).

Another oddity: the weekend series between Florida and Colorado is (as far as I can tell) the only three-game series since 1956 in which both teams had at least 10 SO each in all three games.

Watching the Angels win last night, 1-0, at Yankee Stadium, got me wondering as to which team has won the most 1-0 road games in a season. To find the answer, in terms of "Since 1956," I set Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Team Batting Game Finder to "Team Won, On the Road, (requiring R=1), sorted by greatest number of games matching selected criteria in a game" and this is what I found:

It's an interesting list. Note the Mets teams of 1968 and 1969 here. Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Team Batting Game Finder, we can also look at those nine wins for those Metsies. Just set the controls for "From 1968 to 1969, Playing for NYM, Team Won, On the Road, (requiring R=1), sorted by most recent date in a game" and here are the results: